


never seen blood before

by captainofthegreenpeas



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Advice, Cynicism, Evil Mentor, Gen, Scheming, Young!Plutarch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-01
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-25 17:57:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13840011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainofthegreenpeas/pseuds/captainofthegreenpeas
Summary: During the Victory Tour, a young Plutarch Heavensbee meets President Snow.





	never seen blood before

The party was in full swing. The cordial was flowing liberally; and the chorus of conversation was harmonising into a warm buzz. The guests spread and spilled across the halls in a liquid rainbow, the adults of Panem’s media elite dancing, talking and laughing amongst themselves while their myriad offspring were quarantined in an adjourning hall and appeased with games to burn off the tanks of sugar in their stomachs. Plutarch was glad to be away from all of that.

  
He had done his duty, at first. He had danced a jolly quadrille with Melesa Crane but afterwards preferred to entertain Annarra and Alia Flickerman with an energetic account of the battle of Actium. Feeling that he was being upstaged in front of the elegant sisters by the son of a pair of nobodies, Sejanus Templesmith then threatened to push him into the trifle. The wisest option was then to make good his escape.

  
In fact, making good his escape proved far more interesting. Every since he had entered the president’s mansion, his first instinct had been to explore. Every corner had its hints of history and Plutarch’s curiosity had always been hard to control.

 

There were Avoxes around, intended to herd any wayward children back to their pen, but the only one Plutarch encountered was weeping quietly into a napkin.

Part of Plutarch felt that maybe he might go over and see if she was alright, but then she might send him back to Sejanus, sealing his fate with trifle. She didn’t even notice him slip past her on butterfly-light feet.

  
This wing of the mansion was empty of guests. Plutarch could hear them down the corridor as if from over a hill. Only the portraits watched him wander; and they kept his secret.

He pressed open a large wooden door and beamed to find that the library was behind it. The lights were off, but moonlight gleamed off the book spines. He did not look for a switch. The summer light was enough to see him across the room. His eyesight was still good enough in this light to pick out a tome with an appealing title. It was almost as big as he was, so he had to bend backwards to carry it to the window.

Plutarch sat cross legged on the floor by the window seat, to let the light from the window fall upon the page. There were splendid cushions on the seat, but he did not dare sit upon it for fear of being spotted by someone looking up from outside. He flipped his way through the frontispiece, his hand stilling once he reached the body of the book. Plutarch’s eyes roamed across the pages. Absentmindedly, his finger traced the illumination of the first letter at the top of each page.

  
He was not sure how long he had been sitting there, he was not uncomfortable enough to have been there for very long, but then he could hear someone coming from outside and dashed underneath the curtains. Had he been the height of Alia or the width of Sejanus, he could not have accomplished this. But he was yet small for his age; and the window had been a tall one.   
Judging by the way the colour of the curtains from inside brightened, the lights were now on.

  
“I must confess,” said the President dryly. “This is the first time I have seen a curtain wearing shoes.”

  
Plutarch froze. _The rod_ , he thought. _I’m bound to get the rod_. Teachers did that if you misbehaved at school, he had watched; and the principal did it much harder, so he’d been told- and head teachers were far less important than presidents.

  
“You seriously think I’ll assume it’s the curtain reading? Come out from there, child.”

Reluctantly, Plutarch edged out. Snow stood on the rug, next to a round reading table, watching him. Plutarch watched him back. The President removed his gloves and lay them on the table, silently. Plutarch’s eyes shifted to his hands. They were pale and thin and cold-looking. The finger-joints were round and large, like the knots in a twig.

  
He had never seen the President so closely before. He wondered how and where the man had left the gaggles of hangers-on that trailed him like foam in the wake of a sailing ship. Perhaps he had come to the library for some privacy.

  
“Pick up the book. No, not on the shelf. Here. On the table.” He pointed to the spot with one knotted finger. Plutarch slid it onto the table.

  
Sinking into a chair with a sigh, the president picked up his glass and resumed drinking.

  
“There is a decanter in that cupboard,” he told Plutarch. “Fetch it.”

  
“It’s locked. Sir.”

  
“A little thief, who can’t pick a lock?” The President smiled, then got up and unlocked the cabinet himself with a key from inside his dinner jacket.

  
“I’m not a thief,” Plutarch protested. “Just a trespasser.”

  
“Reassuring enough,” the President admitted, refilling his glass. “Know what they do with trespassers in District Twelve?”

  
“They execute them. Sir.”

  
“Indeed they do, child. Sit.”

  
“On a chair?”

  
“No, on the ceiling.”

  
Judging that to be sarcasm, Plutarch pulled the chair next to the president’s and climbed onto it. His feet dangled off the floor, so he rested them on the fat leg in the middle of the table. Snow had not thought to introduce himself any more than he had thought to ask Plutarch for his own name.

  
Snow opened the book Plutarch had left on the table after resuming his seat. “You like to read, child?”

  
Plutarch nodded. Snow studied the book.

  
“This seems a little old for you. You’re- seven, eight-”

  
“I’m ten.”

  
“You’re a little liar.”

  
“I’m not a liar. Just a trespasser.”

  
“A little trespasser, then.”

  
Plutarch watched him. He knew Snow to be thirty-nine, but the man looked older. His hair was a dark red, almost the same colour as the wine in his glass, but the waves in it were brittle. There were dark circles well disguised under his darker eyes and though there were freckles on his upturned nose, all colour had faded from his chalky bloodless face. His mouth was the worst part, though. It was twisted and sore, the scars of where it had been stretched still raw. He whipped out a handkerchief to trap the blood in his choked, wheezing cough. Plutarch jumped.

  
“Never seen blood before, child?” The President grinned at the look of horror on his guest’s face. _Some of his teeth are newer than the others_ , Plutarch thought. “Get used to it. You’ll see a lot of it, in your life to come.”

  
“In the Games?”

  
“In all the games this city loves to play.”

  
“There’s more than one?” Plutarch was curious.

  
“Of course. When you leave this room, you’ll see them playing it. All of my guests tonight are playing the game as we speak. Making their plans. Watching their enemies. Watching their friends. Speculating, second-guessing. Taking chances. Always ready to make their next power grab, or recover from the last one. They never rest. If you yourself have any ambition, any desire to do anything with your life, you will pick up your own hand of cards and play, one day. Perhaps not of your own free will, but you will play.”

  
“What happens if I win?”

  
“Then you will have to protect what is yours, what you have taken. The game never ends, child. The moment you have anything or anyone of value to you, everyone who can see it will try to take it from you.”

  
“Why would they do that?”

  
“Why wouldn’t they?” Snow took another sip.

  
“People don’t take things from you,”

  
Snow smiled against his glass. “They might want to. But they’re sheep. The whole country is a nation of sheep; and sheep will run from anything that bares its teeth.”

  
Plutarch had no idea what to say. The president looked back at him.

  
“Did I shock you, child?"

  
He dwelt on that a moment. "No,” he decided eventually.

  
“Good. That makes a change.” Snow tilted his head at him, looking up and down. “What were you doing in here, anyway? Shouldn’t you be off playing with the other brats?”

  
“They were not interesting.”

  
“Did they not talk of our latest victor? All their parents are praising him to the skies.”

  
“He is not interesting either.”

  
“Not interesting? Now that is blasphemy, indeed. What is wrong with him, in your view? Does he not fit the very definition of what we call a hero?”

  
“He is a hero, truly.” Plutarch replied, eager to agree but failing to hide the sadness in his voice. He looked at his shoes.

  
Plutarch had grown up on a diet of heroes. They were in every poster; every minute on television. He knew what heroes looked like. Heroes were always tall and slim and strong. Their skin could be one of many different hues, but it was always silk-fine, without blemish or taint. They had scars sometimes, but scars they had won with lions and wolves, not by tripping on stairs or an accident when cooking. They were tattoos of glory, not disfigurements. Heroes were brave and bold and handsome, agile as a cat, wing-swift. They could box, shoot and spar. They threw javelins and slew monsters. Everybody loved them.

  
Plutarch had dreamed of being a hero, but he had always woken up.

  
“Everything you need to play the game is located from your neck upwards,” Snow said, as if he had read Plutarch’s thoughts. “Let the heroes be heroes. When you spill their blood, it’s just as red. Their corpse is just as cold. The world loves a hero. But who rules the world? Me. Remember that.”

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